I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
Martin SeligmanRead
Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals choose the way they think.
Interpretation
Our thought patterns can change, and we have the power to influence them.
This quote emphasizes the flexibility of our thinking habits, suggesting that they are not static but rather choices that we can make. Martin Seligman's findings in psychology indicate that by consciously altering our thought processes, we can improve our mental well-being and overall outlook on life.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage students to take control of their mindset.
I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
One of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I' gets bigger and bigger, and the 'we' gets smaller and smaller.
The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.
I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it? to which he replied, Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.
There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
With every pill we have prescribed for us we should also be given a creative prayer, a suggested way to correct our destructive patterns of thought.
We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future-but this is not necessarily a bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
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